Signs of Life Read Online Free

forget the difficult on this occasion then it makes me wonder how many other uncomfortable
memories my mind has suppressed.
    Ivan’s note lay on top of the papers spread over my desk. He’d used thick black marker pen on a big piece of paper. The note said: Rachel, please call Johnny ASAP,
Ivan. I scrumpled it up quickly and threw it in the bin. I didn’t look up as I tidied my desk; scared that someone would meet my eyes and give me a look that would tell me they’d
guessed it all.
    After my sister’s accident, the day I went back to work, I found a photograph in the top drawer of my desk. The picture was of the office manager, a man who took the
limited powers his job gave him very seriously. People laughed at him behind his back. Carl had written 666 on the office manager’s forehead. It made me smile. That same morning Johnny had
had to leave early and when I was getting ready for work I found a note on the kitchen table. The note said: Cheer up. I didn’t feel cheered, I felt I had received an instruction.
    Carl and I went out together at lunchtime to a cafe I had never been to before and where we felt sure we’d find no one else from work. We sat opposite each other on
burgundy banquettes that were smooth enough to slide on except for the patches of silver tape over cuts in the leather. Carl looked tired and though he listened, he already seemed to know what I
would say. He didn’t protest when I told him it had been a mistake and must never happen again. I got the impression he felt strongly for me and felt I was leaving him and that he was taking
it hard, even though we had barely been together. I was worried that he would tell someone and asked him not to. I must have asked what happened when he got home, whether Katie had been angry that
he was so late, but I can’t remember his answer. The way Carl behaved made me think well of him and made him more attractive, though I couldn’t admit this at the time.
    One reason I wanted to let Carl down gently was because I already knew about his family. Carl’s father died when Carl was six years old and his younger brother four years old. Their mother
never recovered from the loss. She slid into a depression from which she never fully emerged and, after a few attempts, she killed herself when Carl was fourteen, his younger brother twelve. His
younger brother, who I only ever heard Carl refer to as ‘Our Kid’, still lived in the house they had grown up in and where his mother died. It was in the outskirts of a city by the
coast that I had never visited.
    A dream I recorded in my notebook around this time: I am standing in front of a large white house on a grassy hill that slopes down to the top of a white cliff far above the
sea. As if in a bowling alley, I am rolling balls of fire, one by one, down the slope and they drop off the cliff into the sea where they are instantly extinguished, steam hissing up from the
surface. The mood of the dream was calm, I remember it as pleasant though puzzling – what was the fire that I was extinguishing so methodically? Occasionally I still dream about Carl, and
also, though less often, about Johnny.
    Carl chose all his clothes well. He knew what suited him and he didn’t mind spending a lot of money, even though he didn’t earn a great deal. I especially liked the
way he looked in blue jeans and heavy boots, the way the denim, soft and pale in places, showed off his thighs, which were strong and well shaped, not too broad. He wore reddish brown
workman’s boots, shiny with age and wear.
    He was attractive because he was confident and I think he was confident because he knew he was good at sex. After the awkwardness of the first few times, we soon became fluent. For him I learned
to wear silk camisoles, tight cotton vests, to leave them on until he said, Take off your top – and then do this in one smooth motion. Although the way he watched made me feel like a goddess,
his fierce regard induced in me a